The new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — wide open vistas, a bicycle path and a $6.4 billion price tag.

The new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened just after ten o’clock last night (9/2/2013) and this morning, carried away by the prospect of crossing a bridge while the tar was still fresh, so to speak, I picked up a couple of riders at the local commuter pickup point in Berkeley and sallied forth.

First impressions: the bridge really is quite open and spacious. The toll booths are in the same place, but when you get to the end of the metering light lanes, there’s a gentle bend to the right as those nearly two dozen toll-booth lanes funnel down into five lanes and, swoop!, you’re up on the new bridge, the old bridge walled off to traffic by a long section of K-rail barriers.

On the new bridge, as you drive up the incline, you can see the bay, out to the right (north) and on the left, there’s the old bridge. Surprising how prehistoric it looks with its seven-decade-old weathered cantilever trusses. It looks like a giant old Erector set that’s been left out in the rain.

When you pass under the elegant suspension cables that shoot up to the top of the single-span tower, it’s like driving under a giant filigreed wedding veil, somewhat appropriate as it marries the western end of this 2.2-mile eastern span to Treasure Island. Then you’re off the new bridge and into the tunnel — minus the dreaded S-curve that was a makeshift semi-detour on the old bridge.

On the return trip to the East Bay, the moment of shooting out of the Yerba Buena Island tunnel is breathtaking, with the unalterable fact that you’re no longer traveling in a drab steel-enclosed tunnel on the eastbound journey. (The eastbound roadway was on the lower deck of the old bridge.) There’s a sudden revelation of light, of being on a par with the westbound section. Both sections of the new span run alongside each other. And the new bicycle/walking path is along the right side of the eastbound roadway. There are low walls on the bridge and there are breakdown lanes on either side. About the bike path: it’s protected by a barred steel fence, but I wonder what would happen in the case of an horrendous accident where a vehicle flips over the low highway retaining wall and slams into and maybe over the bicycle-path fence.

Speaking of possible problems, the Case of The Corrupt Bolts is not going to go away, despite all the PR vibes at Monday’s opening ceremonies, where nary a bad word was publicly heard. Despite the happy talk, the bolts and their problems are still there.

Still, the bridge, which took 25 years and $6.4 billion to build, is done. And in a few years it will just be the Bay Bridge and some 280,000 cars will have crossed it every day and it will have nestled into that part of our lives where we are used to things and don’t really think about them.